Sigh of relief: it doesn’t suck

I was worried for James McAvoy after the trailer and the sh-tty posters came out for X-Men: First Class that the origin film would suck. Because I love him. I want him to be good. I want for his projects to be good. And it wasn’t just me. Those early clips were universally underwhelming. The marketing plan seemed in disarray. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe it was a classic case of wanting to avoid early hype, and then blowing everyone away with the real awesome closer to release date.

There was a screening this weekend. Early reviews from geeks and critics has been really, really, really positive. Click here for a taste.

Yesterday, several members of the cast, without Jennifer Lawrence who’s been doing promotion in the US to stay close to filming for The Hunger Games, were in London for a photo call to promote the movie including McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and his girlfriend Zoe Kravitz, Kevin Bacon, Jason Flemyng, Alex Gonzalez, and Jane Goldman, a frequent Matthew Vaughn collaborator (ie Kick-Ass), who wrote the screenplay. I suppose we should not have doubted that combination. By the way, Vaughn is married to Claudia Schiffer which… imagine the whole lot of them, with Jonathan Ross (Goldman’s partner), all out to dinner? Random.

So…

I know there are a lot of you who are all about the Michael Fassbender. I won’t fight you on this. But… I’m not feeling how he’s wearing his clothes here. I mean it’s not horrible in the pants, there’s nothing obviously offensive, and I do like them lanky, but this might be too wiry, even for me. And for some reason his feet are bothering me. Something about the way they’re turned out. Or maybe it’s the over-blondeness that’s the cockblocker here. The Aryan vibe has never really tickled my quiver, you know? And he has such a face for it, it’s so much better when he stays dark and brown.

Anyway, no matter, the point is X-Men: First Class is shaping up to be not only not bad, but probably very, very entertaining, making it the second superhero movie in a row this season to not be sucky. Thor was a pleasant surprise too. Can the trend be sustained then? Captain America and Green Lantern are next. And now there’s even more pressure to live up to expectation.